Undergraduate Research Experience At Community Colleges

社区和部落学院是未来STEM工作者的重要来源，这些工作者来自目前在STEM学科中代表性不足的群体。为了让这些机构的学生对STEM职业感兴趣，并鼓励他们坚持STEM专业，重要的是他们在大学的头几年有真实的研究经历。在这个项目中，东爱荷华社区学院将确定本科研究课程的有效性，作为给社区大学生真实研究经验的途径。该项目还将为来自合作社区和部落学院的教师举办一个讲习班，帮助他们有效地开发和教授这些研究课程。参与这一合作的六所学院将各自开发一门研究课程和相关的案例研究。研究课题将以当地社区为中心，让学生参与数据的收集和分析。因此，学生将真正参与到研究中，研究课题将与对学生和当地社区重要的问题联系起来。这些课程的设计将与两年制和四年制合作院校之间的衔接协议相结合。预计由此产生的课程的传播及其评估将增加学生，包括代表性不足的少数民族学生，在STEM领域的入学率和持久性。此外，该项目可以帮助大学将新方法制度化，以扩大未被充分代表的少数民族在STEM领域的参与。该项目的研究结果将通过项目网站与全国其他社区学院分享，可能有助于全国对包容性教学法发展的见解。该资助的教育研究部分将研究学生在这些研究课程中的经历，以回答四个问题：1)参与研究课程在多大程度上增加了社区大学生在STEM学科方面的知识？2)参与研究课程在多大程度上提高了这些学生对STEM学习的兴趣和参与度。3)参与研究课程在多大程度上增加了社区大学生完成STEM学位的动力？4)该项目的活动在接触到被忽视的少数民族学生方面有多成功？课程材料和研究成果将广泛传播，特别是针对全国其他社区大学。由于社区大学的人口结构通常比四年制大学更能代表周围社区，因此实施这些想法应该能提高全美STEM学科中代表性不足的少数族裔的比例。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Community and tribal colleges are a critical source of future STEM workers from groups that are now underrepresented in STEM disciplines. To interest students at these institutions in STEM careers and to encourage persistence in STEM majors, it is important that they have authentic research experiences in the first few years of college. In this project, Eastern Iowa Community College will determine the effectiveness of undergraduate research courses as an avenue to give community college students authentic research experiences. The project will also develop a workshop for faculty from partner community and tribal colleges, to help them effectively develop and teach these research courses. Each of the six colleges in this partnership will develop a research course and associated case studies. The research topics will be centered in the local communities and involve the students in both gathering and analyzing data. As a result, the students will be authentically involved in doing research and the research topic will link to issues that are important to the students and their local communities. The courses will be designed in conjunction with articulation agreements between two- and four-year partner institutions. It is expected that the dissemination of the resulting courses and their evaluation will increase the entrance and persistence of students, including underrepresented minority students, in STEM fields. In addition, the project may help colleges to institutionalize new approaches to broadening the participation of underrepresented minorities in STEM fields. The findings of this project will be shared with other community colleges across the country through the project website, potentially contributing to national insights about inclusive pedagogy development.The educational research component of this grant will study the student experiences in these research courses to answer four questions: 1) How well does participating in research courses increase community college students' knowledge in the STEM disciplines? 2) How well does participating in research courses increase these students' interest in and engagement with STEM learning. 3) To what extent does participating in research courses increase community college students' motivation to complete a STEM degree? 4) How successful were the project's activities in reaching the targeted underrepresented minority students? Both the course materials and the research results will be disseminated broadly, particularly targeting other community colleges around the nation. Since community colleges have demographics that are usually more representative of the surrounding communities than four-year colleges, implementing these ideas should improve the fraction of underrepresented minorities in STEM disciplines around the nation.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.